Beyond Owning the Night

Evolving government/industry team projects will allow
SOF aviators to better operate in brownouts and
other restricted conditions - and own the environment.

LASER-BASED SYSTEMS

The majority of current science and technology and follow-on research and development projects use lasers as their technology underpinning.

One of several laserbased efforts is the Rockwell Collins Laser Landing Solution developmental system. The concept is based on fiber-optic technology that originated in the telecommunications sector. Rockwell Collins is leading the project as an internal research and development effort using technology licensed from Manassas, Va.-based Optical Air Data Systems (OADS).

“That enables a pretty powerful output from the laser with a fairly low input power,” Steve Kennell, director, advanced sensor systems, Rockwell Collins, told SOTECH. The system’s architecture allows up to seven lasers to be integrated. Four of the lasers point down to the ground—one vertically and three at angles. Kennell continued, “This provides a very accurate altitude and very accurate drift.” Three lasers are pointed in front and above the aircraft. This arrangement supplies accurate airspeed, to zero knots, and true and relative wind readings.

The laser system delivers very accurate altitude readings and adds covertness to the mission profile. The diameter of Laser Landing Solution’s laser beam approximates that of the lead in a pencil. “So unless you’re looking directly up into it, it will be very difficult to see—very covert at altitude,” Kennell said.

During flight tests, the Class 1 Eye Safe-rated system has operated at about 100 feet. The lasers have been tested at about 3,000 ft. The Rockwell Collins Laser Landing Solution is designed to operate in any notional rotary aircraft as a stand-alone system or integrated into the display of a more sophisticated cockpit avionics suite.

The sensor has been operationally tested in a Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey for 50 hours at Creech Air Force Base and additional hours at other venues, and another 25 hours in a CH-53E.

A major science and technology-based test flight is planned later this summer. An operational flight test is projected not later than summer 2010. While Rockwell Collins’s Laser Landing Solution is not a formal DoD program of record, the industry team has the cooperation and encouragement of an unspecified department component.

In April, CAE and Neptec Design Group announced the successful demonstration of Neptec’s Obscurant Penetrating Autosynchronous LiDAR (light detection and ranging) (OPAL) sensor that is integrated into CAE’s Augmented Visionics System (AVS). CAE’s AVS solution is being developed to enable helicopter pilots to operate safely in the most extreme conditions, including landing in brownouts.

During a recent technology demonstration at DoD’s Yuma Proving Grounds, Neptec’s OPAL was used to successfully penetrate dust clouds generated by a UH-1 test helicopter. “OPAL could ‘see through’ brownout conditions opaque to the human eye to easily differentiate between rocks, bushes, sloping terrain, utility poles, ground vehicles, and wires at distances greater than 200 meters [656 feet]. The high-resolution detail returned by OPAL provides situational awareness critical to helicopter pilots when attempting to land in near-zero visibility conditions,” according to the team.

Chris Stellwag, CAE spokesperson, added that the companies were invited by the DARPA Sandblaster project office to conduct the tests. He added, “These tests were monitored by the Air Force Research Lab [AFRL]. Note, however, that neither DARPA nor AFRL has signed any contracts with CAE or Neptec related to CAE’s Augmented Visionics System.”

The industry team plans “to return to the Yuma Proving Grounds later this year to perform helicopter flight testing of AVS,” Stellwag concluded.

For its part, DARPA completed the current phase of the Sandblaster program with a successful flight demonstration of the device onboard a Rascal JUH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in January. Current systems engineering efforts are aimed at reducing a Sandblaster unit’s size, weight and power, and determining additional requirements needed to place Sandblaster on the services’ helos. DARPA is also in the process of releasing a pilot familiarization DVD. “It goes through the capabilities and specifications of the Sandblaster system,” Derek Tournear, Ph.D., Sandblaster program manager, DARPA, pointed out.

Sikorsky led the industry team for the completed phase. Other companies included Honeywell (which provided the evidence grid and 3-D display, and completed the fusing of radar and other data) and Sierra Nevada (which delivered the radar).

“Sandblaster demonstrated that we have a system that we can put on rotary aircraft that will allow you to land hands-off, in a degraded visual environment or complete brownouts. It does that by giving you advanced flight control that allows the pilot to land hands-off, completely auto-pilot, to a point that they can vector around in the landing zone to an area that is free of obstacles,” Tournear said. Pilots know the area is free of obstacles by using a priori digital terrain elevation data fused with data from the radar, which sees right through the dust. Tournear added, “This is the first time a system has been demonstrated that can significantly reduce the pilot workload and allow them to land in a degraded visual environment.”

Honeywell is examining how to integrate its Sandblaster program lessons learned into future applications for fixed wing cockpits.

Also downstream, DARPA is working with Army’s Technology Applications Program Office to complete a demonstration of the Sandblaster system using current sensors from the service’s rotary helicopter fleet. The agency is also collaborating with the Air Force and Army to develop follow-on programs that would place Sandblaster on a low-rate initial production- like production model to help deliver it to the field.

In 2008, Continuum Dynamics Inc. (CDI) was awarded an AFRL Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract to investigate aerodynamic approaches to reducing brownout. CDI’s approach followed a dual path that built upon over 25 years of institutional experience developing software tools and providing design and analysis services to the helicopter industry.

“The first approach employed our CHARM [Comprehensive Hierarchical Aeromechanics Rotorcraft Model] rotorcraft design software along with a physics-based brownout simulation tool that we had previously developed for the United States Army, to understand the relationship between helicopter rotor design parameters and brownout for a given landing maneuver,” Glen Whitehouse, Ph.D., associate, CDI, said. He added, “The second was to design and fabricate a dynamically scaled test facility, consisting of a scaled helicopter model that flies a fixed trajectory over a suitably scaled bed of dust. During test runs, the obscuration [i.e., density of the cloud] is measured to determine the severity of brownout. This dual numerical-experimental approach enabled us to simulate the impact of aerodynamic blade design changes on brownout and then experimentally test the most promising concepts.”

A critical component of any design change was to ensure that CDI did not compromise the capabilities of the rotorcraft by degrading the aerodynamic performance. “The Phase I effort saw preliminary testing, and several promising concepts are awaiting follow-on testing,” Whitehouse stated.

INCREASED COVERTNESS

TerraMetrics is using its TerraBlocks synthetic vision terrain rendering engine as the core product to provide 3-D terrain views in a flight display environment in two DoD SBIR contracts.

The Littleton, Colo.-based company recently completed work on a six-month, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) SBIR Phase I contract that investigated how a laser radar (LADAR) can help an individual or a formation of helos land more safely during brownout conditions. Greg Baxes, president, TerraMetrics, recalled that his team used a LADAR sensor on the front end of their TerraBlocks Clear-to-Land/ MultiView system. “Some of the back-end processing, in particular, was looking at evaluating the terrain, generating landing zone preferences, and even going as far as generating routes for multiple ships to come into the same area under brownout conditions,” he added.

Terrametrics is also at the halfway point of supporting a separate, two-year AFRL SBIR contract to conduct research on how to better provide brownout display information. The base TerraBlocks Clearto- Land scenario in the program has its underpinnings in 3-D stereo camera sensors to generate dynamic imagery models. “In particular, that program is very specific to SOF—there are no emissions. We are using cameras without emitting any energy, whereas in the NAVAIR program the LADAR sensor lights the place up with laser energy,” Baxes said. And he summarized the differences between the two SBIR contract outcomes. “There are two different angles—one is no emissions versus emissions, the other is stereo vision versus LADAR—and of course, the multiship perspective for NAVAIR.”

TerraMetrics is collaborating with other undisclosed industry team members to complete the AFRL contract. To date, the team has generated numerous data for the brownout scenario. During the remaining 12 months the team “will be generating data that is very close to the flight context. The actual flight test is downstream. While I can’t comment on that, we will be creating aerial data sets from the 3-D stereo cameras and processing those. We do expect to have a near real-time system late this year,” Baxes reported. While the current technology solution is supported by a 3-D, visible-light sensor, the program roadmap includes moving to infrared and other nightvision technologies.

INCREASING SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

BAE Systems’ Q-Sight, a low-cost, clip-on helmet mounted display (HMD), has as its technology foundation the company’s quantum wave guide technology that supports its Quantum Heads-Up Display. The Q-Sight technology provides a larger exit pupil and seamless transitions between day and night.

John Nix, vice president, business development, defense avionics, BAE Systems, told SOTECH that this capability allows Q-Sight to be a very powerful technology that will dramatically expand the situational awareness of the warfighter. “It has the capability to provide the aviator, be it fixed or rotary wing, with that heads-up, eyes out flight critical data that they need to affect the landing.” Nix, a retired, career Army aviator whose SOF assignments included duty with the 160th SOAR, pointed out that data displayed on the HMD may be in the form of symbology sets or video, as represented by FLIR imagery.

Nix, who also flew missions in the Afghan and Iraq theaters, recalled the rigors of operating in the two environments and stated the benefits Q-Sight will offer aviators. Desert environments tend to be nondescript with little terrain relief or reference features for hundreds of miles. Similarly, the high terrain regions of Afghanistan present more demanding flight performance margins in terms of power and other characteristics. “Q-Sight will give the aviator the ability to keep his head up and eyes out—focused on where he is landing outside—with the data or information he needs to affect that landing, be it just symbology of the horizon, the heading or rate of speed. Some helicopters now have velocity vectors you can place on your FLIR or multifunctional displays—you would have that up on your eyeball instead of down where you would have to look down and look back up.”Mp> Q-Sight is an internally funded BAE Systems R&D initiative that is in low-rate initial production. “We’re targeting full rate production soon. Imminently, we are going to be able to announce a contract with a military customer,” Nix noted. Initially designed as a “plug-and-play” device for different U.S. Army rotor aircraft, Q-Sight continues to be tested on different U.S. aircraft under the oversight of different DoD laboratories and research agencies.

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT

Dust-Off, Elbit Systems’ solution for low-visibility landings (LVL), allows helicopter pilots to maintain situational awareness and avoid obstacles during low visibility flight and adverse landing conditions.

Dust-Off is based on a highly integrated avionics suite comprising three Elbit Systems’ off-theshelf systems, including ANVIS/ HUD-24T (known in the United Kingdom as DNVG) with lineof- sight tracker, and Surveillance and Warning Obstacle Ranging and Display (SWORD) laser radar. Currently under contract to the Israeli Air Force, SWORD delivers a high-resolution scan of the landing zone, providing the crew with an accurate indication of the obstacles in the landing zone.

Digital Map System, the third off-theshelf system, “will display a real-time, fused picture of the landing zone to the aircrew up to entry of the dust cloud. The fused picture will be a combination of a data-based, computer-generated picture updated in real time (obstacles, slope, etc.) by the digital map gathered by the SWORD as the helicopter approaches the landing zone,” Benjamin Weiser, senior director, helicopter upgrades, Elbit Systems, said.

“The ANVIS/HUD, with the addition of LOS functionality, provides an indication to the aircrew by a symbol on the heads-up display of the location of the landing zone,” Weiser pointed out. Another benefit offered by the product combination includes cueing/ slaving of the SWORD to an improvised landing zone in case the selected one is unsuitable. “This could be due to hostile fire or obstacles detected by the SWORD and shown on the digital map on the multifunction display,” Weiser added. The products also provide position and orientation needed for the unique LVL grid symbology for the final stage of the LVL in the dust.

“In July we are expecting initial evaluation flight tests that will verify the viability of the system. These flight tests will be funded by a customer,” Weiser concluded. ♦

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